October 01, 2012

I love autumn. In the vernacular of my young friends, autumn is “chill” and “filthy” and “sweet.” In perhaps more familiar words – it’s simply my favorite season – for many reasons – not the least of which it’s really the perfect time for harvesting and gardening.

Take for instance pumpkins. The plethora of these fat sassy globes everywhere makes me happy. With their orange to gold to bluish hues, strange shapes, Buddha-like bodies and boatload of nutrition, they are one of Nature’s more intriguing plants. I’ve made a foodie vow this year to be more appreciative and get experimental with pumpkin.

Not ready to be dismissed, summer crops such as beans, peppers, eggplant, herbs and okra are making a mad dash for the harvest finish line. We’re savoring the last bit of whatever summer produce we get from our garden, and dehydrating abundant squash, eggplant and apples from friends, farms and farmers markets.

And then there are our recently planted cool weather crops -- lettuces, kale, chard, arugula, radishes and green onions – who seem as deliriously happy as I am about the first whisper of autumn chill. As I watch these luscious goodies sprout, I know what’s coming next – garden bowl salads made with freshly picked, tender greens, thinly sliced radishes and tiny green onions, lightly dusted with parmesan or feta, and then sprinkled with sesame shitake dressing ... there is simply nothing better.

June 07, 2012

For several years, I’ve researched about a bazillion different ways for making our garden more resilient in the face of increasing extreme weather – drought, hail, heat, flooding. Criteria for solutions:

Relatively inexpensive

Easy to install and use in a small urban garden

If at all possible, solutions need to serve multiple functions (a permaculture principle)

Functions included shade, heat and hail protection, cold framing or hoop housing to protect cold-weather crops, as well as a trellis for vining crops – all in an intensively planted square-foot garden.

After sorting through scads of ideas and scouring the web, we finally settled on using 16’ x 4’ 3” steel cattle panels anchored with t-posts to make archways over our garden beds. The steel-gauge frames in combo with shade cloth will serve all of the functions mentioned above, and we plan to experiment with them as a mini-hoop house using heavy gauge plastic over the frames this winter.

After installing the cattle panels, we discovered a function we didn’t plan on … the graceful arches make a mighty fine kitty jungle gym.